Back From Disney

We're back from our week long stay at Walt Disney World. We had the best time! In fact, we were having such a good time that we decided to hit Blizzard Beach and Magic Kingdom one last time and didn't get on the road until 8 pm, which put us home about 4 am this morning.

I am just in awe of the scale of Disney World and how well it is run. It truly is a magical place. I lived in Pompano Beach until I was 7, so I went to Disney World when I was little and again in High School, but I didn't grasp the scale of Disney World and Orlando, in general, until we went there on a last minute trip around New Year's 2003.

I had heard about MouseSavers.com and started doing some research and ran across all the various message boards where people were using all the Disney acronyms and signing all their postings by listing all the years they had gone and where they had stayed. I told Helen, "You won't believe all the stuff out here on Disney." We decided to head down and check things out without any expectations in terms of really doing the parks since Derek was 3 and 1/2 and Adam was only about 9 months. That year, we stayed at the Caribe Royale. We were always hustling to make it to the breakfast buffet before it closed and then would go back to the room so Helen could feed Adam and then Derek wanted to go to the pool and then it was lunch and nap time. One time we finally got out and headed to Animal Kingdom. We drove up about 4:30 and they said that it closed in an hour. Luckily, the Magic Kingdom stayed open late and we went there a couple nights. We also checked out Sea World and drove over to Cape Canaveral to check out Kennedy Space Center.

In the Summer of 2004, we went to Orlando again with Helen's family. We stayed at a condo complex near Disney World. The kids enjoyed visiting with their extended family, but the logistics of trying to get everyone on the same page were too much. I just don't enjoy getting 10 people to agree on where to have dinner or walking 10 abreast through a theme park.

With the boys being 8 and 5 now, we thought it was a great time to stay on the Disney property and really do Disney right with just our immediate family. That's what we did and we couldn't have asked for a better time. Hopefully, we'll be able to do it again in a few years. Once I get settled, I'll put together a detailed trip report for all of you that can't get enough of the details.

I turned off comments on the blog while I was gone and think I'll just leave them off. I like the idea of the blog being an interactive experience with feedback from the readers, but it was just too consuming time-wise and energy-wise, especially when I started having to defend my comment responses to Helen. We've been together for almost 20 years so she's heard most of it before, but she doesn't like me antagonizing everybody and even she gets overwhelmed by my song and dance when it comes flooding out like it did with all the comment responses last week.